| “ | . . . some had been jumped by Mr. Dead. | ” |
– Savannah Nix (The Tell) | ||
"Mr. Dead" is the anthropomorphized version of the concept of "death" that the Lost Tribe has incorporated into their oral tradition of lore.
Overview[]
Mankind has had an anthropomorphized conception of “death” for ages, since death is, after all, a natural part of life that is common to every living thing on the planet. But in the post-apocalyptic world of "Mad" Max, death doesn’t occur as the result of one’s happy, long life. Instead, it is often intently caused by someone(s) and, more often than not, in the most violently gruesome way possible.
To anthropomorphize something means to give it human characteristics. From Wikipedia:
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters.
Humankind has been doing this since the beginning, since he could speak. The process is used, especially, to illustrate psychological ideas
The Lore: Mr. Dead[]
The elder children of the Lost Tribe have stitched together a story of their collective knowledge that they share with the younger children through an oral tradition they term “The Tell.” Along with such ideas as “pox-eclipse,” and “Tomorrow-morrow Land,” they have conceived of death as a mythical figure they call “Mr. Dead.”
“Mad” Max Rockatansky, from his fall at the end of the first story, takes on the personification of “Death.” He is Mr. Dead and he tells the audience so in Beyond Thunderdome, when he says, “I’m not Captain Walker. I’m the guy who keeps Mr. Dead in his pocket.”
Mr. Dead obviously follows the long tradition of such myths as “The Grim Reaper,” “The Angel of Death,” and “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
Creator, George Miller, may not have started out with the intention of creating a mythology, but he has anyway. And it would seem he has leaned into it with his allusions to Norse Myth -- Valhalla and Valkyrie -- within Mad Max: Fury Road. In a morbid saga that delves head-on into themes of apocalypse, survival, and death, Miller draws from the Bible in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga when our History Man-Narrator reveals at the end that Furiosa is the, “Darkest of Angels, The Fifth Rider of the Apocalypse.”
But Mad Max and Imperator Furiosa aren’t merely the bringers of vengeance, violence and death. Yes, they are those things, but in a post-apocalyptic world where there is no law and few rules, where modern-day barbarians coldly rule the Wasteland, Max and Furiosa, whether they intend it or not, ARE the bringers of Justice.